The following is an extract from A Place for All People, a new semi-autobiographical manifesto by Lord Rogers. It is a mosaic of life, projects and ideas for a better society, ranging backwards and forwards over a long and creative life, integrating relationships, projects, stories, collaborations and polemics, with case studies, drawings and photographs.
Tristram Hunt—director of London's Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A)—has expressed concern about one of the city's most successful semi-pedestrianized zones: Exhibition Road in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. As reported by The Art Newspaper, Hunt has argued that the traffic arrangements are “confusing, dangerous and unsatisfactory”. His answer, following a traffic collision on October 7, 2017, which injured 11 people, is to fully pedestrianize the area.
The Westminster City Council has granted planning permission for the New Outpatients Building at St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington, London. Designed by Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios, the 8-story building will consolidate outpatient services currently spread across 40 different locations into one comprehensive care center, increasing comfortability and ease-of-use for both patients and employees.
The team led by Diller Scofidio + Renfro has been selected as the architects of the £2.5 million Centre for Music London project, beating out a star-studded shortlist consisting of teams led by AL_A, Foster + Partners, Gehry Partners, Renzo Piano Building Workshop and Snøhetta.
Working in collaboration with UK-based firm Sheppard Robson, DS+R will develop plans for a world-class concert hall with supporting training, education and digital spaces, as well as attached commercial areas. When complete, it will serve as the new home of the London Symphony Orchestra and Guildhall School of Music & Drama.
Bloomberg’s new European HQ, which is located in the heart of the City of London, has been rated the world’s most sustainable office building. Designed by Foster + Partners, the office complex has been awarded an Outstanding BREEAM rating, attaining a 98.5% score – the highest design-stage score ever achieved by any major office development.
David Marks, architect of iconic British structures including the London Eye and the British Airways i360 tower, has passed away at the age of 64 following a long illness.
Co-founder of the London-based practice Marks Barfield Architects with his wife Julia Barfield, Marks was known for his visionary designs for the public realm and entrepreneurial spirit. In proposing both the Eye and the i360 tower, the husband-wife team took considerable financial responsibility for the project’s success. This forward-thinking lead to the replication of the firm’s ideas in cities around the globe.
The Greenwich Design District is the next phase in London's largest single regeneration project - a new creative hub providing affordable workspaces and studios. Eight up and coming architecture practices have 'blindly' designed two buildings each, independently from one and other. The result is an amalgamation of 'architectural anarchy' and a 'neighborhood of playful contrasts.'
Urban developers Knight Dragon are coordinating the entire development of Greenwich Peninsula, celebrating the diversity of art, design, technology, music, and food industries that this innovative district will be the home of. The mix of architecture stays true to the ideals of the district, presenting a provocative front of 'unexpected contrasts' brought together by the same natural paving throughout the pedestrianized quarter designed by Schulze+Grassov to encourage communication and interaction between the public.
The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has awarded its 2018 Royal Gold Medal to London-based artist and architect Neave Brown, a revered Modernist architect best known for his visionary Alexandra Road housing estate. Built by London's Camden Council in the 1970s the 500-home estate is, in Brown's own words, a "piece of city" containing shops, workshops, a community centre, a special needs school and children’s centre, a care home for young people with learning difficulties, and a 16,000sqm public park.
The medal is awarded in recognition of a lifetime’s work and is approved personally by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. It is given to a person, or group of people, who have had a significant influence "either directly or indirectly on the advancement of architecture." The medal is being presented earlier than usual—in 2017 rather than 2018—owing to Brown's poor health.
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This essay by Space Popular references an installation currently on display at Sto Werkstatt, in London. You can experience it in virtual reality, here.
The Glass House has no purpose other than to be beautiful. It is intended purely as a structure for exhibition and should be a beautiful source of ideas for “lasting” architecture but is not intended as such. According to the poet Paul Scheerbart, to whom it is dedicated, the Glass House should inspire the disillusion of current architecture’s far-too-restricted understanding of space and should introduce the effects and possibilities of glass into the world of architecture.
Bruno Taut [above] described his Glashaus for the 1914 Werkbund Exhibition in Cologne, Germany, as a "little temple of beauty"; as "reflections of light whose colors began at the base with a dark blue and rose up through moss green and golden yellow to culminate at the top in a luminous pale yellow.”[1] The Glass Pavilion, designed based on its potential effects on those who perceived it, was supposed to create vivid experiences. The site was the human mind.
Michel Kozman has imagined a light-filled library for Hyde Park as part of the Archasm Hyde Park Library Competition that ran earlier this year. The competition, which attracted 378 registrations, called for “a stimulating and exciting approach towards the design of a library at Hyde Park.” The brief requested consideration be given to modern forms of media, including audiovisual and digital technologies, challenge the traditional library typology and become a zone within the park for knowledge exchange and gathering.
This short article, written by the author and critic Jonathan Glancey, coincides with the launch of the inaugural Architecture Drawing Prize – a competition curated by the World Architecture Festival, the Sir John Soane's Museum, and Make. The deadline for the award has been extended to September 25, 2017, and successful entries will be exhibited in both London and Berlin.
For architects, says Narinder Sagoo, Head of Design Communications at Foster + Partners, drawings are about story telling. They are also a highly effective way of raising questions about design projects. Although the history of architecture—certainly since the Italian Renaissance—has been mapped by compelling drawings asserting the primacy, and reflecting the glory, of fully resolved buildings, there is another strain of visualisation that has allowed architects to think through projects free of preconceptions.
"The Glass Chain" (Die Gläserne Kette in its native German) was an exchange of written letters initiated by Bruno Taut in November 1919. The correspondence lasted only a year, and included the likes of Walter Gropius, Hans Scharoun, and Paul Gösch. In the letters, the penfriends—thirteen in all—speculated and fantasized about the possibilities of glass, imagining, in the words of Fredrik Hellberg and Lara Lesmes (Space Popular), "fluid and organic glass follies and colourful crystal cathedrals covering entire mountain chains and even reaching into space."
The Westminster Council has approved plans for the Foster + Partners-led transformation of the Snowdon Aviary at ZSL London Zoo. Designed by English architect and theorist Cedric Price in collaboration with Frank Newby and Lord Snowdon, the Grade II-listed structure became the first aviary in the UK to allow visitors to walk through a natural bird habitat when it opened to the public in 1962.
The revamp will preserve many of the original design qualities from the original structure, while updating safety and viewing strategies for its new inhabitants: a family of colobus monkeys and parrots. To make the monkeys feel at home, the design features a series of platforms and vertical elements, allowing visitors to learn about the animals as they swing, jump and explore their surroundings.
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